Persist

By Elizabeth Warren

The inspiring, influential senator and bestselling author mixes vivid personal stories with a passionate plea for political transformation.

Elizabeth Warren is a beacon for everyone who believes that real change can improve the lives of all Americans. Committed, fearless, and famously persistent, she brings her best game to every battle she wages.

In Persist, Warren writes about six perspectives that have influenced her life and advocacy. She’s a mother who learned from wrenching personal experience why child care is so essential. She’s a teacher who has known since grade school the value of a good and affordable education. She’s a planner who understands that every complex problem requires a comprehensive response. She’s a fighter who discovered the hard way that nobody gives up power willingly. She’s a learner who thinks, listens, and works to fight racism in America. And she’s a woman who has proven over and over that women are just as capable as men.

Candid and compelling, Persist is both a deeply personal book and a powerful call to action. Elizabeth Warren—one of our nation’s most visionary leaders—will inspire everyone to believe that if we’re willing to fight for it, profound change is well within our reach.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Macmillan Publishers
• Release date: May 4, 2021
• ISBN: 9781250799258

Elizabeth Warren

Elizabeth Warren, one of the nation’s most influential progressives and a longtime champion of working families and the middle class, is the senior senator from Massachusetts and a Democratic candidate for president. A former Harvard Law School professor, she is the author of ten previous books, including A Fighting Chance, a national bestseller that received widespread critical acclaim. The mother of two and grandmother of three, she lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with her husband, Bruce Mann.

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Persist by Elizabeth Warren

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For my brothers,

Don Reed, John, and David

PROLOGUE

You Don’t Get What You Don’t Fight For

At last: election night 2020.

The three of us—Bruce, Bailey, and me—were piled up on the couch. Husband Bruce on one side, golden retriever Bailey stretched out on the other, and me mushed in between with a blanket on my lap. We had a fresh supply of popcorn and plenty of beer. In memory of Sean Connery, who had just died, Dr. No was teed up on the television.

I was hopeful. But I’d been hopeful four years earlier, and we all saw what a dumpster fire election night 2016 had turned into. So tonight I munched popcorn and swigged beer with a mix of sky-high expectations and deep-down dread.

By the time the three of us had settled in to our eating-drinking-watching marathon and the movie’s opening credits were starting to roll, some results were already trickling in.

Ping!

In came a text about the first presidential results. Actually, it wasn’t a text sent specifically to me—it was a text sent to a group of Democratic senators.

The very early news looked good, and one member of our caucus couldn’t wait to tell everyone about what was happening. The fact that exactly the same news was also on television/radio/internet/carrier pigeon and being shared with several hundred million people worldwide did not change the fact that senators were eager to tell each other what was going on.

Ping! Ping!

Responses to the original text poured in. Emojis. Exclamation points. LOL and OMG and even a WTF. Everyone was a little giddy, but hey, it had been a very long four years.

Ping! Ping!

And then more texts started coming in. Friends. Family. Former students. Folks who had been working for months in the trenches. Have you heard? When will Katie’s results come in? Can we flip North Carolina? What the hell is going on in Miami?

Ping! Ping!

Bruce had to freeze the movie every few minutes so I could check the incoming messages. Not ideal, but I didn’t have quite enough self-discipline to turn my phone off. After all, what if the world came to an end while I was watching James Bond battle the evil Dr. No?

Besides, the pinging brought some good info. I learned about the behind-the-scenes fights to prevent ballots in Michigan from getting tossed out. I got the scoop on which parts of Wisconsin had already been counted and which were still outstanding. A friend described the timelines for getting the remaining uncounted votes in Pennsylvania and Arizona. Another explained the dynamics of the two Senate races in Georgia. Even my granddaughters were in on the action—our Bitmojis were getting a real workout.

Election night was long, but Sean Connery was terrific and the popcorn tasty. And by a little after midnight, two things seemed to be true. First, Joe Biden, a good leader and fundamentally decent man, would replace Donald Trump as president of the United States. (Thank you, Lord!) Second, at least for the moment, control of the Senate was uncertain.

It was a happy—but not a backflips-happy—ending to a tense night.

About two in the morning, I sent my last text. Bruce had been reading news reports out loud, but he gave up, too. We both brushed our teeth and switched off our phones. Bailey had passed out hours ago and was now lying half under our bed and half out. I stepped over him and got under the covers.

But I couldn’t sleep. Change was coming—and I was making a plan.

LOSING HURTS

In 2012, I was new to politics. In 2020, I was new to losing.

I had given my campaign for president every ounce of my energy. I’d laid out my plans and fought as hard as I knew how. And I’d lost.

I dropped out of the race on March 5. The next morning, Bruce and I bundled Bailey into our car and headed for a walk around Fresh Pond, one of Cambridge’s loveliest spots. I felt a little numb, not just because I’d lost but because for fourteen months almost every second of every day had been devoted to my campaign. Speeches. Team meetings. Airplanes. Town halls. Television interviews. Reading policy memos. Calling $3 donors. Writing plans. There was always something to do. Always.

And then—click—it was over. The curtain came down and my world instantly became quieter.

When Bruce and I got back from Fresh Pond, I noticed a message on the sidewalk in front of our house. In bright pink chalk, someone had written, Thank you! I smiled and went inside.

Our neighborhood is a bit of a jumble. Across the street is the oldest farmhouse in Cambridge—it was built in 1681. On either side of it are 1920s apartment houses. Down the block are rambling Victorians that have been cut into multiple units. The four houses on our side of the street date from the 1870s. The bumpy sidewalks are made of brick, so they don’t provide a great canvas.

But later that morning someone left a box of chalk outside, and more messages appeared on the sidewalk throughout the day. Dream Big Fight Hard. Pinkie Promises Are Forever. Our Queer Family Loves You. Children drew flowers and suns and ponies and rainbows.

Messages started overlapping and crawling up the driveway. Bouquets and notes piled up at our front door. Standing at our living-room window that afternoon, I teared up. So many people had been part of the campaign, so many people had worked so hard, and it always made me smile to know that millions of people had cheered me on from a distance. My race was over, yet I was feeling very loved. In fact, I thought I might just wallow in it for a while. I could nurse my wounds and think about all that might have been.

The next morning, I opened our kitchen door, which leads to a small porch on the side of our house. Out on the sidewalk next to the driveway was the biggest message yet. In two-foot-high letters, each letter heavily chalked in, was a single word:

PERSIST

I felt like I’d been hit with a bucket of cold water.

Yeah, I was bruised. Damn, I’d lost. But I had spent more than a year running for president because I cared passionately about making a lot of changes. And even though I’d dropped out, I still cared just as much about making those changes as I did when I was running.

I looked at the message on the sidewalk for a long time. As I did, I gave up any thought of wallowing. Then I said something to myself that millions of people have said to themselves after a painful loss: Suck it up and get back to work.

WHEN THE WORLD CHANGES

There was still plenty to work on. The first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic was just beginning to hit our shores. The resulting economic pain would not be far behind.

Back in January, I had seen convincing evidence that we would soon be facing a dangerous pandemic. I’d issued a plan for immediately beginning to detect, treat, and contain COVID-19 outbreaks, and I followed it soon after with a second plan detailing the more advanced steps needed to address both the health and economic threats. Now, in early March, the coronavirus was taking off with a ferocity that was growing by the day. I gathered up those ideas from the campaign and began to push for an aggressive congressional response. I talked with then-candidate Joe Biden about the crisis several times, and he quickly embraced both a coherent public health response and a range of ideas for shoring up the finances of America’s working families, including providing student loan relief and expanding Social Security.

The challenges were enormous. Our government needed to dramatically improve access to masks and testing materials. We needed to funnel money to hospitals and small businesses. We needed to support state, local, and tribal governments. With hundreds of billions of federal dollars starting to flow, we needed oversight to make sure money went where it was intended. I teamed up with Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley, a fellow member of the Massachusetts delegation, and we began thinking about how the government could determine whether communities of color were getting hit harder with COVID-19 and whether they were receiving the health care they needed. I also began working with Congresswoman Katherine Clark, another outstanding representative from Massachusetts, on how to keep day care centers open.

The need was expanding exponentially, but every attempt to mobilize Congress required a fight with Mitch McConnell and his Senate Republicans, who, typically, wanted to do nothing. Trump made everything worse by recommending quack cures and insisting that the virus would magically disappear any day. It was a big, stinky, dangerous mess.

So yes, there was plenty to do, but what kept echoing through my head was the financial crisis that had done terrible damage a little more than a decade earlier.

In 2008, I had been a professor at Harvard Law School, teaching my classes and minding my own business—at least most of the time.

I didn’t like politics, and my only real dive into that world had ended badly. Back in the 1990s, credit card companies started pushing hard to get Congress to pass a really ugly bankruptcy bill. I had poured my heart into trying to stop it, and in the end I’d failed miserably. But in the early 2000s, I saw a new problem brewing, and it was so big I simply couldn’t sit still.

For decades, banks and other financial institutions had been boosting their profits by tricking and trapping their customers. They’d used credit cards, payday loans, remittances, and overdraft penalties. Now they were making fortunes by misleading people about interest rates, fees, and other snares buried in home mortgage documents. Each year, these predators drove millions of hardworking people deep into debt. Black and Brown communities were prime targets, but the problem was spreading everywhere.

A number of federal laws were designed to rein in the bad actors, but responsibility for these laws was so spread out that no single agency felt any urgency about actually enforcing them. The Federal Reserve focused on monetary policy, not consumers. Banking regulators saw their mission as protecting banks, not regular people. Various federal agencies that should have gone after at least some of the predators chose to look away.

By 2007, the problem was getting so far out of control that I believed it might bring down our entire economy. If and when it did, tens of millions of families would get hammered. They would lose their homes, their jobs, their savings, their security. And none of this needed to happen.

So I had a plan: the government should create an agency with just one job—protect consumers. Using mostly existing laws, the agency could act as a watchdog to make sure that consumers weren’t getting cheated by financial institutions. Banks would be prevented from loading up on risk, and families would be safer. To me, the idea seemed as sensible as a good pair of boots.

But a lot of people saw it very differently. For more than a year, I taught my classes in Cambridge and then got on a plane to Washington, where I would knock on the doors of powerful people and try to warn them about the looming financial crisis. I’d talk about the idea of a consumer agency to members of Congress and staffers and heads of agencies, and mostly they would ignore me or pretend to listen and then do nothing. I vividly remember sitting in a congressman’s office in the spring of 2008; after I explained how the consumer agency would work, the guy laughed in my face. He literally leaned back and laughed out loud—and not in a nice way.

Then the world changed.

In the fall of 2008, the markets crashed. Lehman Brothers went bust, and a dozen other giant banks were poised on the brink of failure. Congress became so alarmed that a bipartisan group of lawmakers passed a $700 billion bailout for the big banks, and President George W. Bush signed it into law. The Federal Reserve started handing out money like a cafeteria lady slopping mystery meat onto plates as fast as she could. Not pretty, but plenty of it. Even so, markets continued to tumble, small businesses closed, and the unemployment rate doubled.

Meanwhile, millions of Americans lost their homes. Millions lost their jobs. And millions more lost their pensions or their life savings. Story after story came out about how Black and Latino homeowners had been targeted for the worst of the bad mortgages. There were stories about military families and seniors who had been cheated out of their homes, and stories about banks that made deliberate decisions to boost their profits by breaking the law.

The red-hot fury over how badly the banks had behaved and how poorly our government had policed those banks changed the mood in Washington. The banks suddenly had fewer friends, or at least fewer public friends. Various congressmen and senators declared that they were shocked—shocked!—to discover that banks were cheating. Gradually the idea of an agency that would protect consumers from financial predators took hold. But in a world that was still heavily influenced by Wall Street bankers and big corporations, the fight for real change was touch and go. More than once, the agency was left for dead.

We kept fighting, though, and in the end we won. In 2010, I sat in the front row of a crowd of people as President Obama signed the Dodd-Frank bill into law and, as part of that bill, created a brand-new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. An idea that had been laughable before the financial collapse became the law of the land. Now, a decade later, that tiny little agency has already handled more than 2.2 million consumer complaints and forced the banks to return $12 billion directly to the people they cheated.

A ONCE-IN-A-GENERATION CHANCE

The first lesson I took from the fight for the CFPB was this: you don’t get what you don’t fight for. That agency didn’t happen just because it was a really good idea. It happened because we fought for it.

The second lesson I learned was that during a crisis, the door to change opens just a crack. What had been impossible becomes hard-but-maybe-possible. That’s the moment to fight with everything you’ve got.

I’m not naïve. I know that the headwinds will always be fierce and that change will always be hard. But a crisis like the financial crash in 2008 or the pandemic in 2020 shakes up the embedded order. In a crisis, people are forced to stop saying This is how it’s always been and consider a new thought: This is how it could be.

After four disastrous years, the election of 2020 was another one of those moments when the door to change opened. And what made change possible? An enormous, vital, incredibly powerful force: voters.

Turnout for the election was huge. Two-thirds of America’s eligible population voted in 2020, the highest percentage in more than a century. An estimated twenty million new voters turned out. Millions of young people voted. Millions of people of color voted. Millions of people—Republicans, Democrats, Independents—mailed in early ballots, found local drop boxes, showed up at the county clerk’s office, or stood in line on Election Day to vote. It was a massive outpouring of faith in the idea that voters—not a group of rich, distant power brokers—controlled this country.

And even after the main event—the presidential race—was over, people kept on voting. The Georgia runoff two months later brought 4.4 million voters to the polls, more than double the number who showed up for Georgia’s Senate runoff in 2008.

Voting is the beating heart of our democracy. When I learned a month after the 2020 election that more than 158 million people had voted, I felt a lot better about our country’s health. Each state’s final vote tally was heartening, but it was also the visible final step of a very long battle. The massive turnout—in the states and across America—was a victory for all the advocates, volunteers, and organizers who had busted their tails for years to get out the vote and fight for a better nation. And here’s the best part: I am confident that most of those who got in the fight in 2020 will stay in the fight for years to come.

And that puts us at this pivotal moment in history. The four corrupt and shocking years of Donald Trump’s presidency were topped off by a pandemic, an economic collapse, a national demand for racial justice, and a violent insurrection. For Trump’s entire tenure, crisis piled on crisis piled on crisis. Now we have a once-in-a-generation chance to build something new, to shake off who we were and decide who we want to become.

This remarkable moment is an opportunity for change but not a guarantee that it will happen. It is a rare chance to think hard about the policies we want to change, especially the policies that touch our lives every day and set the boundaries for much of what happens to each of us.

As a candidate, Joe Biden may not have looked like a progressive firebrand, but he and Kamala Harris ran a campaign promising the most aggressive economic, social, and racial changes in U.S. history. They won by more than seven million votes, receiving more votes than any presidential ticket in the history of the republic—and they accomplished this feat while running against an incumbent president. Measure their victory however you like, but there’s no question that it was a mandate for change.

Our country’s voters demanded a new approach to governing, and the most obvious power to make it lies with the new president himself. New administrative rules and executive orders can redirect significant parts of the federal machinery to work better for families. New cabinet secretaries and agency directors can use existing legal powers to put policies in place that will get our country moving forward again. With courage and determination, President Biden, Vice President Harris, and their team must use every tool available—administrative and legislative—to improve the lives of millions of people.

But change doesn’t stop there. For the first time in more than a decade, Democrats will have control of the House, the Senate, and the White House. When Republicans held a similar position in 2017, they delivered on one big promise: a $2 trillion tax cut that mostly benefited rich people. Democrats now stand at that same threshold, and we, too, can keep a promise—except instead of delivering more wealth and power to the already-wealthy and already-powerful, we can build on an America that works better for everyone else.

The 2020 election also proved that the country’s states are much more than helpless bystanders in a time of great upheavals. During Trump’s tenure, many states bucked his administration and enacted policies that made a lot of positive change. And on Election Day, several states quit waiting for the federal government and made some very progressive moves. Florida voted to raise the minimum wage to $15. Arizona voted to increase taxes on wealthy people to help fund public education. Colorado voted for twelve weeks of paid family leave for most workers. The values and plans that drive progressives at the federal level can also spark change locally.

The door to change is open. Now is the moment to act. Now is our chance to make the changes our nation so desperately needs.

IT’S PERSONAL

When I ran for president, I followed up nearly every rally and town hall with a selfie line.

After my speech and the Q&A were over, people would line up, often with family or friends, and we’d take a picture together. The pictures were fun. Or silly. Or sober. I was happy to do whatever the next person in line wanted.

As much as I loved the selfie lines, there was a good reason not to do them: time.

The math was straightforward. If I stopped doing selfies, I could complete my town halls faster. And if I had more time, I could travel to more places, do more town halls, and meet more people. But even though I wanted to go lots of places, I really didn’t want to give up taking selfies.

As the crowds grew, getting through the selfie lines began to take three or four hours. Soon the math got even more brutal. When I was pinned down in the Senate for days on end during the impeachment trial in January 2020, the need to travel to more places on the few off days intensified. Other candidates worked the rope lines, shook a few hands, and moved on; why couldn’t I? Well, I tried, but after a few times, I went back to taking selfies.

The reason was simple: I loved them.

Working my way through selfie lines grounded me in the richness and passion of our democracy. The lines included old people and babies, groups of teenagers, longtime friends, whole families. People using wheelchairs and strollers. People who couldn’t push their way to the front of the rope line. The final selfies after an event would frequently be taken as the venue was being swept out and someone was turning out the lights. Just before we headed for the door, the off-duty cops who had provided security and the crews that set up the stage and ran the sound equipment would often ask if they could have a picture, too.

Sure, I understood that taking selfies cost a lot of time. But the selfie lines were about more than campaign pictures and moving along to the next event. They gave me a chance to feel, heart to heart, the deeply personal need for change.

In a selfie line in Indiana I met a delightful little girl who got her pinkie promise and danced off the stage. Then her mother quietly explained that this beautiful child had brain cancer. Please, please, please fight for health care.

In Iowa I met a farmer whose family had worked the same land for five generations. He said he and his brothers had been thrown deep into debt by the one-two punch of Trump’s idiotic trade wars and the unrelenting pressure coming from the giant agriculture outfits. One brother had declared bankruptcy and another had killed himself. We’re running out of time.

In Nevada I met a veteran with diabetes whose sister and niece were also diabetic. He got his insulin from the VA so he was covered, but his sister and niece didn’t have insurance. When money got too tight to pay for their prescriptions, the three of them shared his insulin, juggling decisions about who needed it most and who could skate on the edge of collapse just a little longer. Couldn’t we just get the price down?

In South Carolina I met the mom of a shy third grader who needed extra help with reading but who was stuck in the back of a class with more than thirty kids because the school district had been forced to lay off teachers. Doesn’t my kid matter?

I met a woman who feared that her son, who was in prison on a drug charge, would not survive to make it home to her. A small business owner who had just closed his doors forever. A lively young woman disowned by her parents and her church because she loved another woman. A teacher who paid for crayons and paper out of his own pocket. Two teenagers who had been the targets of online racist bullying. Dozens of women (and a few men) sporting their NEVERTHELESS SHE PERSISTED tattoos. A woman who had just buried her mother in her PERSIST T-shirt.

I met mothers who had lost their children to gun violence. Children who had lost their parents to opioid overdoses. Young people crushed by student loan debt. Seniors unable to get by on Social Security. People with disabilities who couldn’t find housing. Children who understood that storms and wildfires signaled a coming climate catastrophe. Dreamers who had nightmares about federal agents coming in the night.

Meeting people in selfie lines was draining, exhausting, and overwhelming. It was also one of the best things I’ve ever done in my life.

Over the course of the campaign, we took well over one hundred thousand selfies. And it was in those selfie lines that the intimate, immediate impact of policy was driven home with the force of a body slam. People came with their stories. They didn’t use the word policy, but in just a few words, they explained precisely how health-care policy or student loan policy or trade policy had plowed through the middle of their lives. Hundreds of times a day, the selfie lines drove into my brain the simple fact that Americans are profoundly affected by federal policies. And they taught me again and again how important it is that we get our nation’s policies right.

I loved those selfie lines for another reason, too: they gave me hope—hope that, despite all that is broken, we can make democracy work in America.

The people I met in selfie lines were wrestling with real problems—no mistaking that. But as wrenching as some of their stories were, almost every one of them carried a kernel of optimism. People stood in line, often for a long time, to get into my events. Once inside, the town hall itself could run for two or three hours—there were several speeches, an extended Q&A, a fervent pitch for volunteers. And after all of that, people lined up again, sometimes for three hours or longer, to take a selfie and tell me their story. No one would do all that if they didn’t believe that real change is possible.

Over and over and over, those selfie lines offered a glimpse of the determination and commitment that we’ll need if we’re going to fight to make change happen. When the faces of real people crowd your imagination, when the stories about their lives become a part of how you see the world, that’s when policy becomes personal.

WHAT DO YOU BRING TO A KNIFE FIGHT?

Nothing we do will be easy. No one with power will give it up readily. Our battles will be hard. Sometimes we’ll find ourselves in a knife fight, and we’ll need our sharpest weapons.

But more than anything, the toughest fights will demand that we bring our whole selves. We must bring energy and determination. We must bring clarity of purpose and a richer understanding of our common goals. We must bring a deep-down commitment that will sustain us even when the fight looks impossibly hard.

This book is not a campaign memoir. It is not a rehash of big public events. It’s a book about the fight that lies ahead. It’s about the plans we need—no surprise there!—but it’s about much more than plans. It’s about the passion and commitment that underlie those plans, and the human connection that will keep us in this fight until we see real change.

I write knowing with absolute certainty that if we fail to make major changes, we will plunge our nation and our planet into an abyss from which we cannot escape. I also write with a deep thrum of optimism that we are in a moment when extraordinary changes are possible.

Much is broken in this country. More than seventy-four million Americans voted to return Donald Trump to the White House, even as he left our government, our reputation, and even our faith in each other torn and ragged. In January 2021, his followers stormed the Capitol in an effort to stop the peaceful transition of power that has been a hallmark of our nation from its creation. But even in the darkest hours, I have never stopped believing in the strength of our democracy. Even when hatred has flared and hissed, I have never stopped believing in our capacity to create a better country based on the values we share. I believe right down to my toes that we can build a nation that expands opportunities—a nation that works, not just for the rich and powerful but for everyone.

As I lay sleepless under the covers on election night, I thought about why the fight for change matters so much to me. Why do federal laws and policies wake me up in the morning and keep me up at night? Why do I wade into one battle after another? Why do I get back up after a god-awful loss, ready to charge ahead again?

Because for me, like the thousands of people I met during my campaign for president, this fight is personal. I bring the pieces of who I am to every battle. I’m a mother and a teacher. I’m a planner, a fighter, and a learner. And I’m a woman. Together, these pieces furnish the foundation for everything I do. They are the lenses through which I see much of this world. They drive me to fight for millions of other people. They make me strong.

The stories in this book come straight from my heart to yours. I share them in the hope that they will give spark to the battles you wage and keep you grounded in the righteous fights.

ONE

A Mother

I first walked into a classroom as a bona fide teacher in September 1970, and by January or so, I was settling in. The butterflies I’d felt in the first few weeks were gone. I’d figured out lesson plans. Figured out the supply closet. Figured out parent conferences, the drop-offs and the pickups. And figured out the pecking order in the all-important teachers’ coffee room.

I was a first-year teacher at Riverdale Elementary School in Riverdale, New Jersey. I loved these children, and I loved this work. Finally, here I was. Twenty-one years old, doing exactly what I wanted to be doing.

I grew up in Oklahoma, the baby girl in a family of boys. Like every other girl I knew, I was sure I would go to high school, learn to drive a car, get married, and have kids. I knew the plan. Living that plan was what it meant to grow up.

But I had one more part to my plan: teach school. Since second grade, I had wanted to be a teacher. When my teacher, Mrs. Lee, had put me in charge of extra reading practice for a handful of second graders, I was hooked. There would be no stopping me.

For years, I lined up my dollies—Terry Lee, Suzi, Sammy, Toni, Nursey, Lady, the Storybook Dolls, and all the rest—and taught school for hours and hours. Of course, Sammy was always the bad boy and the Storybook Dolls were empty-headed, but I wasn’t discouraged. I kept right on teaching.

The road had been bumpy. My mother didn’t want me to go to work (just marry a man who is a good provider). We didn’t have money for college (college is for other people). I

Reviews for Persist

[froxgirl · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

My fellow book club members noted that it was quite different to read and to listen to Elizabeth Warren's post-2020 election summary. Reading her plans and logical and well-thought-out justifications for her advocacy of free childcare, taxing the very wealthiest, reduction of student debt, and improving health care seem logical rather than extreme. Hearing her read her words reminds us of the endless speeches that every candidate needs to make, trying not to come off as a soulless robot. You can share her hurt and frustration at the apparent refusal of Democratic voters to choose a woman for president, in light of Clinton and then Warren, Harris, and Klobuchar's losses. It's never the "right" woman. It's always her "scolding voice", her "tone", her pantsuits, her schoolmarmish demeanor, her jerk of a husband, etc etc etc - that seems to evoke bad childhood memories in both men and women. The interplay of policy and personal life works very well here. Warren is back, energetic and seemingly much younger than her 70 years, and she WILL persist in urging Joe Biden to keep making good choices and decisions to benefit the largest number of American citizens - whether they want it or not.

[darthdeverell · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Senator Elizabeth Warren’s Persist draws upon her experiences as an educator, a Senator, and a Presidential candidate to explain how we can become a more just society that invests in the future and gives people the tools to better contribute for the betterment of all. Senator Warren walks through various elements of the modern Progressive platform, drawing upon her own lived experience to explain how she developed her stance on issues while detailing current events and what they reveal. An insightful read, Persist suffers from some of the drawbacks of memoirs intended to lay out a political platform rather than cap off the end of long career. Many of Senator Warren’s proposals, while still possible, would face greater or lesser support given events that transpired between the writing and publication of Persist, with the passage of time between then and readers eventually reading her book further dating it. That said, those interested in Senator Warren’s perspective will find Persist an invaluable resource while it will also aid future scholars looking to learn about how people contextualized the COVID-19 pandemic as it was unfolding.